Govhamasenga in the sources
Govhamasenga was, in the Hamutsha tradition, the brother of the mother of Thohoyandou and the ancestor of the rulers of Tsianda and Hamutsha. Nemudzivhadi follows his informants in saying that Thohoyandou advised him to leave Dzata for the south so that his many sons would not become rivals to Thohoyandou’s descendants.
What the sources say
At Dzata. Nemudzivhadi writes that in Thohoyandou’s time Govhamasenga was not yet a khosi but an important figure through his attachment to the Masingo royal household. When Thohoyandou was at the height of his power a suspicion arose that Govhamasenga and his many sons might contest the kingship; Nemudzivhadi calls this hard to understand, since as the brother of Thohoyandou’s mother he had no right to it and could have been expected to defend his sister’s son (p. 165). Thohoyandou nevertheless advised him to leave Dzata (p. 166).
His move south. He left a son, Maphaha, at Phahwe, went on to Vhusenzi and settled at Tshinavheni, which proved unhealthy because of mosquitoes and tsetse flies; he then turned north and placed his sons at Tshivhulana (Netshivhulana), Tshimbupfe (Nengodzi), Tshiphuseni (Masie) and Tshisahulu (Makumbane), while Muungufhala settled along the Vhembe; Govhamasenga himself settled at Tshituwani with his youngest son Tshipetane and stayed there until his death. Tshipetane succeeded without a succession war, and in turn was succeeded by his son Dingana (p. 166). Nemudzivhadi adds that this old kinship tie between the Masingo and the Vhalaudzi was one reason Govhamasenga’s descendants appealed to Makhado in 1882 (p. 166).
Later. Nemudzivhadi’s argument is that Govhamasenga’s line stayed apart from the Singo core (Mpofu, Makhado’s grandfather, was establishing himself at Sunguzwi during Tshipetane’s time) and ruled in “comparative peace” for generations (pp. 166 to 167). See Tsianda and Hamutsha.
Cautions
This is a family tradition from the descendants’ side, given by informants in the 1980s. Wikipedia and the community sites we have used elsewhere say nothing about Govhamasenga, and we have found no independent confirmation of the sons’ settlements. The spelling Gwamasenga is that of the 1939 typescript title; Nemudzivhadi writes Govhamasenga. The account of the Tsianda succession rests chiefly on two elderly informants from Hamutsha (B. Mugivhi, about 73 in 1985, and Makhadzi Ramphiri, about 90 in 1986), on a 1906 Location Commission paper on the tribe of “Netseanda and Mogibi”, and on N. J. van Warmelo’s 1940 report on the Sinthumule chieftainship, as Nemudzivhadi cites them; they favour the Hamutsha view of events, and we have not seen the commission paper or the report. A Venda typescript by M. Mugivhi on Govhamasenga and his sons (1939) is in the Van Warmelo collection at the University of Pretoria; we have not read it. Nemudzivhadi is a Venda historian whose subject is Makhado’s reign; he built on oral interviews done between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s and on colonial archive papers, and he often says where his informants and the written sources disagree, as do we.
Sources and further reading
- Mphaya Henry Nemudzivhadi, “The attempts by Makhado to revive the Venda kingdom, 1864-1895”, PhD thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (1998), chapter 7; open access at the North-West University repository (a scanned copy; we read it by OCR, and page numbers cited are the thesis’s printed numbers)
- M. Mugivhi, “Gwamasenga na vhana vhawe” (Venda typescript, 1939, published in Mudededzi II, pp. 73 to 77), Van Warmelo collection, University of Pretoria; listed only, not read
See also Tsianda, Hamutsha, Makhado, Vhalaudzi and Lwamondo.
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